Fremont speeding an outrage

Friday

Paul Leonard said he moved to Taunton from Dorchester to give his four daughters the freedom of being able to safely roam around their suburban surroundings.

But in the six years that he and his wife have lived on Fremont Street he’s become very concerned about what he described as “an ongoing issue:” Drivers who regularly speed up and down his street.

Paul Leonard said he moved to Taunton from Dorchester to give his four daughters the freedom of being able to safely roam around their suburban surroundings.

But in the six years that he and his wife have lived on Fremont Street he’s become very concerned about what he described as “an ongoing issue:” Drivers who regularly speed up and down his street.

“It’s like a highway. It’s really absurd,” Leonard said.

And potentially deadly.

Sunday night, just before 7 p.m., a 13-year-old girl pedaling home on her bicycle was seriously injured when she was struck by a small SUV traveling in the opposite direction.

Briana Surette, 13, suffered two broken wrists, a shattered leg, a hairline fracture and deep bruising to one hip, a collapsed lung and a concussion, her mother Rebecca Surette said.

The Coyle and Cassidy High School freshman was listed as being in fair condition Thursday at Children’s Hospital Boston, and is expected to come home sometime next week, her mother said.

Rebecca Surette said that her only child has had surgery to her shattered right leg, her left wrist and will spend weeks at home undergoing physical and occupational therapy.

She can also expect to spend upward of eight weeks in a wheelchair, Surette said.

Although Fremont Street has in many people’s minds become synonymous with reckless driving, Sunday night’s accident appears not to have necessarily been attributable to speeding.

Both a witness who lives on Fremont Street and the woman driving the Toyota RAV 4 told police the girl was talking on her cell phone when she tried to avoid the car, which had just begun to descend a small hill.

But instead both the bike and the car swerved the same way and struck each other with considerable force.

“I heard the impact,” said Leonard, who was inside his 79 Fremont St. house at the time. The intensity of the sound, he said, convinced him that speeding was a factor.

The driver, Luisa Andrade, 55, 193 Fremont St., was not cited for a traffic violation and was not injured.

Surette and her mother live on nearby Edwards Avenue.

Fremont Street has no sidewalks on either side of the road running north from a house at 70 Fremont St. There is also not a single speed limit sign posted anywhere on the recently paved road

And that, Leonard and Surette said, is a grave problem — especially for kids on bikes and other residents, many of whom are elderly, who enjoy walking.

In 2007, Leonard said, his dog was hit near his house, resulting in $1,000 in medical bills.

Worse still, in October of 2007, a city man, who witnesses said impatiently sped around another car, was killed when he lost control of his vehicle on Fremont Street, sheared off a section of bark from a tree trunk and nearly crashed into the living room of a house.

That tree happens to sit in the front yard of Paul Leonard’s property.

Coincidentally, less than a week before, a man who apparently suffered a heart attack was also killed when his pickup truck hit the front of a house at 58 Fremont St.

Leonard said he doesn’t necessarily regret having moved to Taunton, but is extremely frustrated with what he sees as the current administration’s lack of initiative in tackling the problem head-on.

“The mayor hasn’t done anything,” Leonard said. “What am I supposed to do, put up a memorial if one of my daughter’s is killed?”

“Enough is enough,” he added for good measure.

Leonard said that his two younger daughters, one 13 and the other 15, are both friends with Briana Surette, who, he said, has slept over his house on many occasions.

Taunton Police Chief Raymond O’Berg said that he and his two-man traffic squad (one of whom is on sick leave) are well aware of the speeding on Fremont Street — as well as on other problem streets like Thrasher, Tremont and Oak.

O’Berg said as a result of Sunday’s accident the available traffic officer will be monitoring Fremont Street with radar. But even that, he conceded, is no solution since the officer can’t possibly be there every hour of the day.

In 2007 the chief said that portions of Fremont Street have a speed limit of 30 miles per hour, despite an absence of signs.

O’Berg is also appealing to drivers to use extra caution on Fremont Street this Friday night, otherwise known as Halloween.

“We don’t want any tragedies,” he said.

In a cruel twist of irony, Rebecca Surette, who lives alone with her daughter, was herself severely injured by a city driver in 2007, although not on Fremont Street.

She said that after pulling over on Winthrop Street near the Shaw’s plaza, and getting out to check one of her car’s doors, she was struck by an elderly driver.

Surette, 34, said her pelvis was shattered and that one of her hips was “ripped off” from her body. Since then, she said, she has been legally disabled.

Besides having to walk with a cane she relies on a wheelchair for longer distances and can’t sit in one position for an extended period of time, the result of broken vertebrae.

She said she had told her daughter, who was not wearing a protective helmet the night of the accident, to be home before dark and not ride her bike at night.

When Briana does recover and is well enough to ride a bike again, her mother said, she can expect new rules to be strictly enforced.

For her own safety, Surette said, there will be no riding at night allowed, no riding without a helmet and no talking on a cell phone while pedaling in the street.

cwinokoor@tauntongazette.com

Never miss a story

Choose the plan that's right for you.
Digital access or digital and print delivery.